"I am proud to shut down the government for border security, Chuck, because the people of this country don’t want criminals and people that have lots of problems and drugs pouring into our country. So I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. I’m not going to blame you for it." -- Trump, 12/11/18

Words of Advice:

"Never Feel Sorry For Anyone Who Owns an Airplane."-- Tina Marie

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

"Flying the Airplane is More Important than Radioing Your Plight to a Person on the GroundWho is Incapable of Understanding or Doing Anything About It." -- Unknown

"There seems to be almost no problem that Congress cannot, by diligent efforts and careful legislative drafting, make ten times worse." -- Me

"What the hell is an `Aluminum Falcon'?" -- Emperor Palpatine

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

Sunday, September 30, 2018

Of the many things that were notable and disturbing at the same time was the temper tantrum that was pitched by Brett Kavanaugh during th Senate earing last Thursday. Kavanaugh yelled, berated his opponents and, a time or two, openly weeps over how cruel it was that he couldn't just step into the job that he felt that we was entitled to have.

If a woman had sat there and yelled and cried, she would have been dismissed out of hand as being emotional, hysterical and certainly not of a temperament fit for even a trial court, let alone the Supremes. She likely would be laughed out of the hearing room.

So it's OK for a male Republican to yell and cry in a pubic setting.

Another thing of note was the speed at which the Republicans got rid of the prosecutor who they hired to question Dr. Ford once it became clear that the prosecutor was going to seriously question Kavanaugh about the allegations. Which was a pretty despicable move.

Saturday, September 29, 2018

Friday, September 28, 2018

I wish every man in the entire world would read this. Men, walk in our shoes for just 30 seconds by reading this post. Guys ask why women are so pissed off. Even guys with wives and daughters.

Jackson Katz, a prominent social researcher, illustrates why. He’s done it with hundreds of audiences:

“I draw a line down the middle of a chalkboard, sketching a male symbol on one side and a female symbol on the other.

Then I ask just the men: What steps do you guys take, on a daily basis, to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? At first there is a kind of awkward silence as the men try to figure out if they’ve been asked a trick question. The silence gives way to a smattering of nervous laughter. Occasionally, a young a guy will raise his hand and say, ‘I stay out of prison.’ This is typically followed by another moment of laughter, before someone finally raises his hand and soberly states, ‘Nothing. I don’t think about it.’

Then I ask the women the same question. What steps do you take on a daily basis to prevent yourselves from being sexually assaulted? Women throughout the audience immediately start raising their hands. As the men sit in stunned silence, the women recount safety precautions they take as part of their daily routine.

Hold my keys as a potential weapon.

Look in the back seat of the car before getting in.

Carry a cell phone.Don’t go jogging at night.

Lock all the windows when I sleep, even on hot summer nights.

Be careful not to drink too much.

Don’t put my drink down and come back to it; make sure I see it being poured.

Own a big dog.

Carry Mace or pepper spray.

Have an unlisted phone number.

Have a man’s voice on my answering machine.

Park in well-lit areas.

Don’t use parking garages.

Don’t get on elevators with only one man, or with a group of men.

Vary my route home from work.

Watch what I wear.

Don’t use highway rest areas.

Use a home alarm system.

Don’t wear headphones when jogging.

Avoid forests or wooded areas, even in the daytime.

Don’t take a first-floor apartment.

Go out in groups.

Own a firearm.

Meet men on first dates in public places.

Make sure to have a car or cab fare.

Don’t make eye contact with men on the street.

Make assertive eye contact with men on the street.”

― Jackson Katz, The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help

One example of this in action: Decades ago, the State of Vermont tore down its unattended highway rest areas after a couple of women were kidnapped from them.

I've not heard of a man needing to have his big brother come by and stare down a workplace harasser. I know women who have done that.

But hell, elect a clown to the presidency who has had a long track record of sexually harassing women and it should not have surprised anyone that he would pick one of his peeps for the Supreme Court.

There is a lot in this video that shows why, a long time ago, I stopped photographing steam excursions. You can set up in a good spot with a camera on a heavy tripod and clueless people would stand right in your shot.

You'll also see people violating a cardinal rule of rail safety: Don't stand on the other tracks.

If 80,000 Americans died in terrorist attacks last year, we'd be under martial law, there would be concentration camps holding everyone who ever said anything bad about El Presidente Cheeto.

First and foremost, get a fucking flu shot, people. Even if it's only 20% effective, if you do get the flu, it'll be of less intensity. 20% protection isn't anything to sneeze at. Wash your hands after being in public places (or take George W. Bush's advice and use Purell).

When it comes to the butcher's bill, context matters. 80,000 dead from the flu, 37,000 in car crashes merit a big "meh". Less than 3,000 dead in 9-11 merits years and years of clothes-rendering and sacrificing civil liberties (not to mention being afflicted with Rudy Giluliani).

If you are a citizen of the U.S., you are eligible to vote and you are not registered to vote, then get off your motherfucking ass and go register to vote.

Today is National Voter Registration Day. And just because the Party of the Confederacy is making it harder to register to vote and to vote, that's no reason to not register and vote. In the first 2/3rds of the last century, people were killed for registering to vote. Saying "ooh, it's just too hard" denigrates their sacrifices. Saying that people have fought and died for freedom disrespects their deaths if you don't exercise your freedom to vote.

You say your vote doesn't matter? In my county, a few years back, an election had to be redone because so few people got off their asses to vote that there was a tie. That cost tens of thousands of dollars.

More to the point, if you don't vote, then your opinion is valueless. If you don't vote in November, then every time that you are about to offer an opinion on politics, you should, instead, punch yourself in the face.

Sunday, September 23, 2018

100 years ago this month, the Meuse-Argonne Campaign got underway. It was the largest battle in American military history and the costliest. In less than seven weeks, half as many Americans would die as who died in the Vietnam War.

Also 100 years ago, the second wave of the Spanish Flu gathered steam. Worldwide, the pandemic killed far more people than did the First World War.

80 years ago, the Great New England Hurricane struck Long Island and New England. Much of the woodlands of southern New England were, at the time, white pine. The hurricane blew most of them down. Federally-funded logging salvaged the timber. The hardwood trees, which survived, repopulated the forests. The fall foliage tourism would not have happened absent the Great Hurricane of 1938.

74 years ago, the Battle of the Hurtgen Forest began. It's considered the longest single battle in U.S. Army history and was widely considered at the time to be a meatgrinder. Historians have come to regard the battle as a defeat for the Army. On the other hand, the success of the Germans may have emboldened Hitler to order the Battle of the Ardennes, which didn't end so well for them (and which ended the Luftwaffe as an effective force).

I'm pretty certain that "the calm before the storm" happened the day before the rains and winds came from the hurricane, not afterwards.

In the listing of Stupid Shit Said by Trump, this one is going to take a fairly high rank. Not as high as his repeated pronouncement that the crowd at his inauguration was larger than Obama's, or his claim that neo-Nazis are nice people, but not terribly far behind those.

If this is true, then if you are an executive with John Hancock, I respectfully hope that you contract a severe and loathsome disease, one that results in boils on your genitals and pustules on your face, and may you die soon, painfully, and often.

This is a perversion of the namesake of your company, a Founding Father and a patriot, who pledged his life, liberty and sacred honor in the cause of freedom. But now you propose to electronically shackle your policy owners. You dishonor his name. For shame.

Anyone who buys into this is a schmuck and a fool, and that include anyone who uses one of those electronic snitches from Progressive and Allstate.

I'm pretty sure that you can red all sorts of vile smears and teenaged innuendo. I haven't gone looking for it, because, well, there are enough people as it is who are deserving of having their testicles stomped.

Tuesday, September 18, 2018

It used to be that mega-millionaires and billionaires with more money than they knew what to do with bought ranches and farms. Now, instead of running hobby ranches, they're running for the presidency?

What do we then get in 2024; the winning billionaire from 2020 versus Jeff Bezos?

If this country has gotten to the point that the presidency is being held by billionaires, whose main interest is in preserving and increasing their wealth, then the system is rotten beyond reasonable repair.

Monday, September 17, 2018

I’ll wait until 12.1 (or 12.0.5) is released, thanks. More and more, companies are using the consumers as the last line of QA/QC. A lot of the early release Ruger GP-100 .44s went back to the factory for rework, a problem that is, by no means, confined to Ruger alone. I'm starting to note tremors in the Force when it comes to Kimber's revolvers.

Saturday, September 15, 2018

Sentencing will be done after he’s finished cooperating with investigators;

The sentencing guidelines would put him in prison for 17-1/2 years to 21 years, 10 months (lots of incentive to cooperate);

If Manafort doesn't fully cooperate, the prosecution can ask for more time;

If he does anything dumb after he signs the agreement, he could get more time;

He'll be fully debriefed, turn over all documents, and testify in any other proceedings;

Waives all rights and procedural defenses (statutes of limitations, admissibility of evidence, etc);

Agrees not to take any pay for books, speeches, appearances, or anything like that'

Forfeits several properties in NYC, New York state, several bank/brokerage accounts (and that this happens right now).

There are two properties that the Feds agree to take in exchange for his home in Virginia and his Schwab account. One is a condo in Chinatown (NYC) and the other is his condo in Trump Tower.

So Manafort gets to keep something. On the other hand, once he finishes paying for his lawyers, he'll probably have nothing much left. But he'll still do less than 15 years (with good time), if he proves his worth to the Special Counsel's people.

And then there is this:

How vigorously the Special Counsel's office might cooperate with state AGs and other federal attorneys will likely depend on how much value they can get from Manafort.

If the Trump Boys haven't hired top-notch criminal defense layers by now, then they're dumber than they look.

No doubt that Rudy the Mouth will be all over the talk-shows tomorrow to cast as much shade as he can. Which at this point, may be damned little.

Edited to add: Lawfare's analysis is worth the read. Unlike your humble scribe, those folks do practice criminal law in Federal courts.

Manafort's lawyers likely made a proffer to the prosecution about what he could tell them if they accepted the deal. Maybe somebody pointed out that if the Feds took all of his shit and sold it off, he would get nothing back if Trump pardoned him on his way out the door. But if he cuts a deal, maybe he can keep some of his shit.

If you're in the U.S., you're probably getting wall-to-wall coverage on Hurricane Florence. On the other side of the world, Typhoon Mangkhut is moving to tear the hell out of Luzon in the Philippines and then into mainland Asia.

------------------------------------

One funny thing about the Right: You can find no shortage of calls from them to "let drug addicts die", instead of saving their lives by using Narcan. Yet when people refuse to heed evacuation orders and then need rescuing, you don't see or hear conservatives calling to "let them drown".[1] Why is that?
_____________________________________[1] Other than when Katrina hit New Orleans and Maria tore the shit out of Puerto Rico.

The reason may be because Trump's lawyers have convinced him that pardoning Manafort, arguably in order to hinder the investigation of a criminal conspiracy involving Trump and/or his sons, would, in itself, be an impeachable offense.

They could impeach Trump, but getting to a conviction in the Senate is another question. Nixon wasn't willing to run the table on that, but Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton were and survived.

The difference between 1974 and 2019 would be that, to my mind, Republicans in 1974 had some care for the rule of law. Republicans, nowadays, only care about power. They'd suffer Trump sleeping with a teenager if it meant that, by so turning a blind eye, they'd keep their seats in the Senate.

The "cone of uncertainty" for Hurricane Florence is looking like a soda straw:

Florence is a cat 4/5 storm. The weather talking heads are saying that there is a strong high over the Northeast, which is blocking Florence from turning north and following the coast.

If you're in the coastal areas in the path of Florence, you probably should have already headed for Alabama. If it stalls out soon after it makes landfall, it could be nasty all the way to Appalachia.

Meanwhile, five thousand miles to the west, Hurricane Olivia is drawing a bead on Honolulu:

Click on either image to enlarge

Olivia is a lot weaker, a weak cat 1, so coverage on the networks is a lot less focused.

Should either storm have the potential for affecting you, be safe. But be sensible.

I was living in the Boston area when Hurricane Bob was tracking towards there. I was at a grocery store, buying a few supplies. There was someone behind of me in line with a cartload of frozen food. I looked at the shopped and said: "Wow, you've got a lot of food, there."

Shopper: "There's a hurricane coming."

Me: "What are you going to do with all that frozen stuff if the power goes out?"

The shopper looked at me, looked at the contents of the cart, and then wheeled it right out of line.

Just because Trump bleats "national security" doesn't make it so. Fifty years from Nixon, by now, we all should know to be extremely skeptical when a president claims that national security for any sort of fuckery.

Trump is also whining about suing The NY Times. I'd be curious to know what sort of legal grounds he and Rudy the Blowhard can gin up.

Trump thinks it could be treason. It's not treason by any stretch of the imagination. Asking for and taking help from a hostile foreign power to win an election, that's a hell of a lot closer to treason. Only to a tinpot dictator would that be treason.

Sunday, September 2, 2018

Saturday, September 1, 2018

One of the things that has sort of enraged me over the last week is reading wingnut blogs which have referred to the late Sen McCain as "Songbird".

That is nothing more than a right-wing insult, made by people who have not an iota of McCain's character and grit. It's an insult from people who are sitting in comfortable chairs and who largely have never suffered any serious physical discomfort in their lives. They certainly didn't spend five years in a Commie prison, being ill-fed, mistreated and tortured.

So McCain broke under torture. Everybody does. Unless you, personally, have experienced being tortured by North Vietnamese sadists, you have no right to judge McCain.

Therefore, if you're one of the legions of right-wing trolls who have called McCain "Songbird", you should be ashamed of yourselves.

And if you are not ashamed of yourself for that, then go fuck yourself, your horse, your parents, your ancestors back ten generations, and anyone who looks like you. For you are a disgusting lump of sentient protoplasm.

Rule No. 5: Terms of Service: Political appointees of the Obama and Bush Administrations may not read this blog unless they (i) post a comment confessing same and (ii) acknowledge that both men are war criminals. This blog may not be read by members of the Arizona Legislature.

Violation of this term is a violation of 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2)(C) and you're off to share a cell with Chris Christie, asswipe.

Rule No. 6: If I wanted you to write a "guest post", I'd ask you. Don't bother asking me to put one up from you. I won't. Start yer own goddamn blog.You Have Been Warned.